Visiting the Boutsen Ginion Racing Team

Visiting the Boutsen Ginion Racing Team

We love motorsports, and you can find a vote page in this site, where you can see, that soon we want to build a Le Mans Prototype car. In this year, the European Le Mans Series came to Hungary, hand-in-hand with the World Series by Renault. Because this is a unique opportunity to see such cars so close we knew, that somehow we should have to get into one of the teams and study their LMP2 car. Our letter was simple, we introduced ourselves, and what we are doing, and what we will be doing in a few years and we requested some passes for the friday free practice sessions. The great surprise was, that the Belgian Boutsen-Ginion Racing‘s member Olivia wrote back to us this:

“Hello

ok

we agree for you to visit our box

no problem

what day are you coming ?

our tests are on Friday, so better on Friday

as the qualif and race is on Saturday

sporting regards,

Olivia”

What could we say to this? We loaded our batteries, wrote our questions and drove to the Hungaroring in Friday. Late summer weather, perfect conditions for the cars and for us! As fast our happiness came, it goes by that fast when we arrived to the main gate, because the guards said, that the track is closed for everybody on Friday, only members of the teams could enter. We can only go in we have a team’s pass or someone from them came down… One of the security guy was very helpful and brought up a letter to Olivia with our problems and she sent back 3 passes! YAY!!! We were in the paddock section 😀

One of the first trucks was the Boutsen Ginion’s, so we found them easily, but the paddock was huge and there were lots of things to see there. We knew, that this is going to be a long day 🙂

As soon as we get there Olivia showed us their box (it was pretty tight, they had to share the box with another team, because there were lots of them there on that weekend) and introduced us to the team’s manager and to some of the engineers, and of course, it was hard not to notice their LMP2 orange-black car.

I have to say, I tought those are smaller… This is car is huge, but what do you need to know about these? Just some basic informations:

This is an Oreca Nissan LMP2 car, minimum weight 900 kgs, with a V8 engine, which produces 450 hp. It was so good to see, that this is a used car. Full of scratches, tiny damages and we could feel the races in it. We asked some questions about the telemetry sensors and they said they will show them in a bit, just had to take the wheels off… By the way the impact wrench is so loud 😀 Loved that sound…

We had the possibily to see and analyze the brakes in close-up, but I saw some movement in the front of the car and I just saw that they take the car’s front apart, because they started to set it up to the second free practice. So the brakes weren’t so exciting now, all of us moved to the front and we were amazed by the beautiful suspension and front section. here are some images again…

And then suddenly, they took the engine cover off and the whole rear section was naked… Oh My God! 😀

Lunch brake, so we moved away and take a walk in the paddock and watched the other teams and cars, and also let some room to the engineers at the Boutsen-Ginion garage.
Ohh look, formula Renault 2.0 cars are waiting to enter to the race track. We probably saw some of the future F1 drivers as well, because these are really just teenagers with helmets. Even though these are also great machines!

Red Bull F1 Team will also do some laps in sunday, and their truck was there, hence they also put together the car. Here you can see the rear end of the car… and it looked like it’s a newish gearbox, because that sheet was fixed to that place 😉

Formula Renault 2.0 second free practice was over, so the big brothers came, the Formula Renault 3.5. Real F1 experience. Very loud, very noisy, incredible motion and accelerations and did I mention already the sounds? 🙂

Walking back the boxes a little guy came towards us 🙂 The world’s first Renault from 1898. Lovely little car 🙂 (Take a look at the differential, cute :D)

Back in the box just in time, because the engineers were warming up the LMP2 car’s engine with incredible sounds, meanwhile the 3.5L Renault formula cars were practicing some start procedure and pit-stop. Decibel war in the echoing garage!!!

Drivers arrived Khaled Al Mudhaf and Alex Kapadia made some radio check and did some discussion with the team. And we were just standing there with a blessed smile 😀

ELMS racing cars were coming out from the boxes and lining up to start their second free practice. Ferrari 458, Lamborghini, BMW, Prosche, LMPC and LMP2 cars. Our dream vehicles in front of us in just a few meters.

It was very good to experience the pit-stops and the driver change. We really saw every movement 🙂

In the end of the practice we left the garage and thanked Olivia and to the team this fantastic day and this opprtunity. We really enjoyed every minute of it. Thank you again Boutsen-ginion Racing, good luck in the future!

I put together a small video for you, so you can see and feel our day closer! 🙂
Enjoy!